Today at THT

My 11th grade trigonometry teacher made a secret deal with me: he promised to give me Cs if I promised not to sign up for his AP Calculus class my senior year. It was a fabulous tradeoff, and since then math and I have respected this non-agression pact to the letter. Thankfully we have guys like Colin Wyers and Tom Tango around to pick up the slack:

  • Colin does all sorts of unspeakable things to Microsoft Excel in an effort to determine whether preventing a run and scoring a run contribute equally to winning a ballgame;
  • Tangotiger furthers the Tim-Raines-is-a-Hall-of-Famer argument by comparing him to various leadoff hitters, number three hitters, and Hall of Famers, concluding “[a]ny time we compare Raines to a reasonable group of Hall of Famers, we always end up with the same thing: Raines is just like them.” That’s great and all, but tell me Tom: how much was he feared? Yeah, I thought so.
  • Meanwhile, over at Fantasy Focus, Jonathan Halket talks about why keeper leagues kinda suck. Sounds like someone had a bad draft his first year. As Roy Hobbs said, some mistakes in life you never stop paying for, Jon.

  • 6 Comments
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    Jeff Wright
    15 years ago

    How could preventing a run or scoring a run not contribute equally to winning a ballgame?

    Craig Calcaterra
    15 years ago

    Dude, you gotta ask Colin, because I pretty much got lost the minute he started using three digits to the right of the decimal point.

    Dave Studeman
    15 years ago

    I don’t mean to get all mathematical on you, but there’s a simple way to look at it.  If you start at the average number of runs scored (say, 5 per game), a run saved can only go down to zero (five less).  But a run scored can go up forever, particularly in Coors Field and Arlington Stadium.  So some of those runs scored won’t have much impact, but a run saved almost always does.

    APBA Guy
    15 years ago

    APBA Guy-

    The finding that there may be as much as 1.5 wins per season to be had from improved defense coupled with the drop in overall offense explains the reported rush of GM’s and asst GM’s to comb through defensive statistics in search of undervalued players, and may to some degree also explain the Cardinals trading for Khalil Greene (less than 40 errors at SS over the past 3 years).

    On the fantasy note, the keeper league comments tend hold true for roto leagues moreso than sim leagues. Given that there are many, many more roto players than sim, the differences between the two (mainly in time committed and in desire to experience more facets of the game, such as actually playing games), it’s understandable that this was not explored. But as a long-time sim player, sim is mainly keeper format to heighten the GM-like feel of teams and team building.

    TC
    15 years ago

    I’m fully convinced you’re doing this because you’re pining for a return of baseball already (who isn’t?), and you need something to replace And That Happened.

    Craig Calcaterra
    15 years ago

    You would not be wrong in that assessment.  Must. Have. Regularly. Scheduled. Content.